Saluting Women Power

By lute wa lutengano

I remember it was way back in the 60s when I was growing up in the Southern Highlands in the then Tanganyika. Actually by then I was a young boy in my early primary school days. The school was a few hundred meters from my homestead, and like every young pupil we used to wake up early in the morning and after taking a biting-cold bath followed by some hot, tongue-scalding porridge we literally ran to our school.

There was some rough road to the school, but for want of a shortcut we used to pass, or rather run on a path which cut through a grove of bamboo shrubs. This enabled us to cut by almost half the time of the journey to the school. This was the case for most of the year until when the rains arrived.

During the rainy months, the time we used for the trip to the school was almost tripled. Unfortunately this was not because of the rain. Rather the reason was because during these months new bamboo shoots sprouted all over the shrubs. These were the main source of the sweet bamboo wine ‘ulanzi’. When cut these tender shoots immediately produced the wine which was taped for immediate consumption. For every new cut there was some more fresh wine flowing out of the shoots.

As stated earlier, our path to the school passed through these bamboo groves. Actually the whole village was covered by these ‘natural wineries.’ It goes without saying that we failed to resist the temptation to take a few sips, which in due course became gulps, of the bamboo wine as we ran to school. Naturally in the course of doing so our running was in no time reduced to some wobbly walk. We paid for it dearly at the school for arriving late and ‘tired and emotional’, as the British would wont to call somebody who is tipsy or rather drunk.

But then during those rainy months every pupil, and naturally all the teachers drank generous amounts of ‘ulanzi.’ I remember these were also trying months for many a family. It would all begin by the husband failing to report home for two or three days, spending most of his time in ‘ulanzi’ clubs. And as several husbands go, he would do this in the company of some members of the fairer sex.

In the meantime, the wife would be very enraged to the extent that she would resort to drinking more ‘ulanzi’, also in the nearby clubs. Obviously the children would go hungry for two or three days. But since there is plenty of ‘ulanzi’ around, they would drink it so much that they would not feel the hunger. Fortunately, I must admit ‘ulanzi’ happens to be very nutritious, and nobody would notice the long term alcohol effects to the health of the children until it was too late.

Many marriages, family ties and friendships broke up during the rainy season because of ‘ulanzi.’ But on a happy note most of these were re-united during the dry season when ‘ulanzi’ was scarce.

I remember, however, that there was one ‘ulanzi’ season when things went out of control. That season, the husbands, in their totality decided to abandon their families three or four days every week to spend their nights in ‘ulanzi’ clubs. That is when they felt the full wrath of their jilted womenfolk. The women, in their totality decided unanimously, that no woman will sleep with her husband until they, the men folk, abandon their drunkenness. Initially, the husbands laughed off the whole thing. But that was not for long. In no time they were seen, unanimously, asking their wives to forgive them and promising that they would be drinking ‘ulanzi’ moderately.

I therefore was not surprised to read in the Kenyan press the other day that a group of women in one of the suburbs of Nairobi went on warpath one evening and destroyed all local drinking joints arguing that the joints are destroying their husbands. The women also threatened to boycott sex with their husbands until they promised to change their ways of life. It worked.

But this one from Cameroon is more serious – some 6000 women in north-western Cameroon had by last week spent the past three weeks protesting at the royal palace in a land dispute with cattle herders. They took several local chiefs hostage and banned all parties and celebrations, halting all social life.

The BBC reports that social life in Wum, 83 kilometers north of Bameda town, virtually ground to a halt as the general population heeded to the women’s ban on all types of celebrations. Guess what? The women have won the land dispute. Women power!

lutengano@hotmail.com

Last modified: November 14, 2003.
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